Flying high and free as a bird
NOEL GALLAGHER HAS A KNACK FOR PERSUADING FRIENDS TO APPEAR IN HIS MUSIC VIDEOS
Noel Gallagher is a hard man to say no to, particularly at 5am as a big night is winding up. And that is how Matt Smith, the acclaimed star of The Crown and Doctor Who, landed in the video for Gallagher’s single We’re On Our Way Now.
For free, according to the straight-shooting rocker.
“I don’t think I paid him a f---ing penny; he’s my mate,” Gallagher says, laughing.
“To be honest, we were around here at my house in London – we were breaking the law during lockdown, I will admit that – it was about five in the morning and as he was leaving I said to him ‘By the way, mate, fancy being in my next video?’
“And he went ‘Yeah, no f---ing problem, I’ll be in your video.’ And I never let him forget it.”
Smith and co-star, actor Gala Gordon, must have enjoyed the experience because they agreed to continue their music video love story for this week’s new single, Flying On the Ground.
The romantic French new wave-inspired clips also featured another famous co-star whose diva antics during filming resulted in a major continuity glitch. The difficult “star” was Gallagher’s vintage MKII Jaguar, bought for about $200,000 as a rock star indulgence in the ’90s at the height of Oasis’s fame – despite the fact he can’t drive.
It has been out of the garage twice since Gallagher bought it and the second time, in March for the video shoots, it threw a hissy fit.
“Because the car hadn’t been out of the garage for 20 years, it broke down in the middle of the f--ing street,” Gallagher says.
“We pushed it to a garage and by the time we got it fixed, it had gone dark and we couldn’t shoot the last bit of the video.
“So with a healthy dose of ‘F--it, that’ll have to do’ it looks like some of the video has gone missing.”
Both songs feature on the “best of” compilation, Back The Way We Came Vol. 1 (2011-2021), marking a decade of Gallagher’s solo entity High Flying Birds.
He admits the compilation was a lockdown-inspired project that kept him occupied when his recording and touring plans were disrupted by the pandemic.
But the gathering of tracks from the three albums and three EPs he has released over the past 10 years bear testament not only to his prolificacy as a songwriter but also his eclecticism.
As Gallagher points out to anyone surprised by his full-tilt electronic experiments on Black Star Dancing, This Is The Place and Blue Moon Rising released throughout 2019 and 2020, he was one of the first rock artists to feature on a Chemical Brothers track back in the ‘90s.
“When you’ve got a band, and a brand with such a strong identity as Oasis had, the parameters are narrow because people only come to you for Oasis music,” he says.
“I didn’t realise that until I left, and that I could do anything, and that was quite liberating. But you’ve also got to prepared for people to say what you are doing is s---.
“I didn’t really care until Holy Mountain came out and we were on tour in South America with U2 and woke up the next morning to let’s say, very, very mixed reviews, which is good.
“What I wasn’t prepared for was the extremes; the people who loved it, really loved it and the people who didn’t like it, really f---ing hated it.”
Over the decade of recording and touring with High Flying Birds – whose live line-up currently includes a woman who “plays” scissors as an instrument – Gallagher deserves props for serving up hundreds of different responses to the same question.
The thorny issue of an Oasis reunion, which Noel categorically rules out despite the social media cajoling from his younger brother Liam, raised its head yet again when the Gallagher brothers registered a company called Kosmic Kyte a few months ago.
The new business entity isn’t a sign of a thawing in the Gallagher permafrost. But there is something “new” coming from the Oasis camp.
“This year is the 25th anniversary of Knebworth and back in 1997 we shot a film, like the Woodstock documentary, talking to fans and all of that about this seminal moment in British music history,” he says.
“And true to form, we put it in a locker and it never came out. So it’s 25 years, so we had to start a film company so we can put it out.”
Back the Way We Came, Vol. 1 by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds is out now.